I’m jittery and sleepless, jumpy with nerves. I have a constant buzz of nausea, which buggers my appetite completely. I’m pretty much existing on a diet of raw caffeine, Coke Lite to be specific. I’ve helped myself to a few of Mum’s cigarettes.
This is not the greatest state in which to start a heavy new training programme. Ellie sat down with me on the first day and went through a set of health questions, and I told her exactly what she wanted to hear. So, I sleep for nine hours a night, eat a healthy balanced diet and have never smoked. More or less true six months ago, give or take the odd kebab. Mostly true just a few weeks ago. But now I’m forcing myself to nibble a handful of crisps, which is all I’ve eaten today before facing her for the third training session this week.
It’s a bright sunny day, but instead of going to the running track we head for the school gym. It’s not like any school gym I’ve ever been in. They call it the Fitness Suite and it’s full of expensive equipment.
It’s very quiet because most people are outside. She sorts out a programme for me, shows me how things work and writes it all down. ‘I’m not going to be able to give you as much time as this in the next few weeks,’ she says. ‘I’ve got a big competition coming up. So you need a programme you can work at on your own.’ It all sounds like hard work.
‘What you need is an access card,’ she adds.
‘A what?’
‘An access card, so you can use all the sports facilities of the school out of hours. The only thing is they don’t hand them out to anyone as young as you, but I can go and have a word with Mr Henderson if you like.’
She smiles, then ruins it. ‘Anyway, you seem much older than your age. I can’t believe you’re still only twelve.’
‘I’m not twelve,’ I say, devastated, adding lamely, ‘I’m nearly fourteen, actually.’ What an insult. I’m going to be fifteen in November.
She grins. ‘Sorry! Let me ask anyway.’ She tells me which buttons to press to set up the treadmill to let me run for forty minutes, and says, ‘I’ll be back soon.’
It’s strange running on a treadmill, and I don’t like it so much. I feel like I’m about to fall backwards or wobble off. It takes a few stops and starts to get going, and eventually I find the easiest thing is to shut my eyes and imagine that I’m outdoors. At first it’s hard going, then the rhythm of the breathing takes over, and the physical motion gets easier and easier.
I run and run and in my head there’s a long road leading to London. And then I’m back in the park, running and running, heart thumping in my chest. Thoughts scuttling round my head like rats on a rubbish tip: ambulance, Arron, ambulance, Arron.
I’m running and running and there’s no one to help me; and then I see the red bus on the road and I know I can get help and I know I can help Arron and the red bus is red blood and it’s flooding the white shirt. . .
I slam my hand down flat on the treadmill’s emergency stop button and stagger off the machine. I’m going to faint or throw up or something. I drop to my knees on the mat and curl into a ball; I’m trying to stop the shaking which has taken me over. I’m still like this when Ellie comes back.
‘Oh my God,’ she says. ‘Are you all right?’
I can’t speak. I concentrate on stopping shaking. She stretches her hand out, leans down to me, pats my shoulder and asks urgently, ‘Joe, what’s happened? Are you OK?’
With a huge effort I sit up. But I can’t speak. I breathe deep and hug my arms around my knees. I have to stop shaking, I have to stop seeing the blood, the mud, the meaty flesh – stop thinking about the ambulance, stop the panic. Christ, Ty, get a grip.
Ellie hands me a bottle of some sugary sports drink. ‘Try this. Maybe you’re dehydrated.’ I sip a little. It helps. ‘Shall I call for help? Are you in pain?’
I shake my head, no, filled with shame. I want to speak, but every time I open my mouth I shut it again because I’m very scared that what’s going to come out is going to sound something like a scream.
Ellie moves her hand on my shoulder and I reach up and grab it. It feels like she’s the only thing keeping me anchored to safety. I glance around. Thank goodness we’re all alone. Ellie keeps hold of my hand, and I gradually calm down. It’s strange looking up at her when I’ve only ever looked down.
We seem to sit there in silence for hours, but eventually she says, ‘You’re looking better now. Can you tell me what happened?’
I’m still holding her hand, like a pathetic baby. I let it go right away. She straightens up and I think how uncomfortable it must have been for her, leaning over the chair to reach me. I’d like to run away but I owe her a little bit of truth. ‘I closed my eyes when I was running and I lost touch of where I was. It was like a flashback.‘
‘A flashback to something pretty scary?’ she says, obviously dying to know more.
‘And I haven’t had much to eat today, and I suppose that didn’t help.’
She looks at her watch. ‘It’s six o clock now. Are you OK to go and get changed? Then we could go down to the High Street and get a coffee and a snack and have a chat. I don’t want this happening every time you’re training, especially if I’m not always going to be around. And look. . .’ she reaches into her pocket, ‘I got you an access card. But there was a big fuss about it. That’s why I was so long. There’s a boy in your year – Carl someone – who’s the captain of the under-fourteen football team. He was furious that he and his team weren’t getting cards too. Argued for ages. But Mr Henderson said he could make an exception for one but if he let them in he’d have to let in hundreds. I hope you don’t get any hassle about it.’
I shrug. ‘Thanks, anyway.’
She looks thoughtful. ‘Unless, maybe, this has put you off training completely. Do you think it could happen again?’
I consider. ‘No. I like training. Mostly it makes me feel a lot better. It’s just today I wasn’t in great shape.’
‘Good. Can you get up? You ought to stretch a bit too.’
I get up. I stretch. And thirty minutes later we are sitting in an organic health food cafe on the High Street – ‘I don’t think we’ll find any of your fan club in here. They’ll be having frappuccinos at Starbucks,’ says Ellie – and she orders some brown rice stir-fry for both of us.
‘What do you mean, my fan club?’
Ellie laughs. ‘Joe, you must realise that you’ve taken the school by storm. Most of the girls in year eight – and years seven and nine for that matter – are crazy about you. You’re the talk of the town.’
She’s got to be joking. ‘How would you know?’ I ask cautiously.
‘Oh, I have impeccable sources,’ she says. ‘I have a sister in year eight, plus I run a group mentoring young sportswomen. Believe me, I know everything.’
‘You have a sister in year eight?’ I’m wondering how I’ve missed an Ellie lookalike, particularly one who has her eye on me.
‘In your class. Claire. Of course,’ she adds hastily, ‘she’s just reporting to me on what the other girls think. She’s not one to follow the crowd.’
Claire? The tiny little mouse who sits in front of me? How can she be Ellie’s sister? ‘Oh yes. She doesn’t talk much.’ I’m trying to think how to find out more without sounding big-headed.
‘They all think you’re older than you are. That’s why I was teasing you about only being twelve. Apparently you’re very mysterious. And there are the cheekbones as well.’
Oh. I think she’s probably still teasing, but it sounds like my disguise isn’t holding up too well. I’m chewing my lip, which is what I do when I’m worried.
Ellie asks, ’You don’t like that? It’s good, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t know. It’s all a bit complicated.’
‘I can see that.’
‘Ellie, please, you won’t tell anyone what happened?’
‘Of course not. I wish you hadn’t been on your own though. If you had passed out on the treadmill you could have injured yourself.’
‘Yeah, yeah. But I didn’t. I mean, I didn’t even pass out.’
‘How much are you eating Joe? That was all crap wasn’t it, when we did the health survey?’
‘Err, well it wasn’t really, because mostly I do eat healthy and sleep and everything. It’s just that the last few weeks have been a bit . . . umm . . . difficult. I mean I was just answering on a general basis.’ I was answering from the time when Gran was around to keep an eye on me, to tell the truth.
‘So, right now, how’s your eating? And sleeping, smoking and drinking?’
‘Well, we’ve just moved, so eating’s a bit chaotic. I mean, we haven’t got a routine or local shops or stuff. And I’ve been finding it difficult to sleep. And my mum says smoking is good for her nerves so I thought I’d just try and see if it helps.’ I poke at the brown rice. It’s weird, but nice, to have a proper meal that I haven’t had to make.
‘For God’s sake, Joe, are you mad? You get the chance to join one of the best school athletics squads in the country and you take up smoking?’
‘Er, well. . .’
‘Why did you move in the first place?’
Why? Hmm. . . ‘My mum broke up with her boyfriend and she wanted a new start.’ I think that’s a pretty good cover story to invent, off the cuff.
‘And what about your dad?’
‘I never see him.’
I suddenly remember something my gran once said about my dad. ‘That Danny Tyler,’ she grumbled, ‘so bloody good-looking that he had his own fan club. Of course your mum had to outdo all the rest.’ Gran didn’t seem to like my dad much but Ellie’s comment about my fan club makes me feel quite close to him. I’m called Tyler after my dad, and changing my name meant losing that little link.
‘So you and your mum must be a bit lonely, in a new town, making a new start, then?’
‘We’re OK.’
She says, ‘I used to get a bit shaky like that when I was in hospital, when I’d just had my accident.’ I’m amazed by how easily she can talk about it even though her whole life must have been shattered. I know a bit how that feels. ‘I was in a terrible state. I blamed myself, everyone else. . . I couldn’t see a future. All I wanted was to go back in time.
‘One day a physiotherapist came to see me. I refused to do any work with her. I just shouted and screamed. And she said, “Scream all you like, nothing’s going to change unless you do.”’
‘What happened? Why did you change?’
She smiles. ‘She gave me something to think about and it really helped. I started working for myself, to take control. But the best thing was discovering that being in a wheelchair wasn’t necessarily all bad.’
‘Why not?’ I ask.
‘When you race a wheelchair it feels like you’re flying. Honestly Joe, it’s better than cycling or skiing.’
I wonder if one day in the future I’ll be Ty again, and able to say, ‘Once I had to go into hiding because I witnessed a crime. It wasn’t all bad, when I was Joe.’ It’s unimaginable. This is never going to be something that I can own, that I can talk about.
‘Right Joe,’ she says, ‘you’ve got to leave the past behind. Forget it. Be really positive and focus on what you can achieve now. Because you could do incredibly well. You could go right to the top.’
I shrug. ‘I’ll try.’ I wish I could, but the past won’t leave me alone. Some other people have come into the cafe, and I can feel myself getting jumpy again as I check them out.
Ellie thumps the table. ‘That is not good enough. Don’t sit there shrugging and acting cool. Am I just wasting my time? I want you to show a bit of commitment. God, it’s frustrating to see someone with such potential giving less than 100 per cent.’
I don’t know what to say. People are looking. ‘I’ll do my best.’
‘You’d better.’ She’s a bit scary when she’s like this. I don’t mind being nagged by her though, because she’s so incredibly pretty.
She writes out a suggested training diet for me and asks if I can try and keep to it for a week and see how I feel. She asks if I can play music on my iPod to keep my mind busy when I train – yes, very good idea. She says I must never just run on the treadmill, I must do interval training so I have to keep concentrating and changing the settings. She says, ‘You’ve got to promise me to keep off those cigarettes or I’m going to come and talk to your mum.’
‘Oh, bloody hell, Ellie.’
‘I would, you know.’
She would too. I’d better keep them apart.
We leave the cafe, and arrange a time for training the next day. Coming out of the cafe she has to manoeuvre carefully around a pothole, and I wonder whether I should have offered to push her home or whether she’d think I was being crass. I have no idea how to act around the wheelchair. Mostly I just pretend it’s not there.
It must be such a pain for her, never just being normal. And if you’re stuck in a wheelchair it must be more than irritating to see people with no disabilities failing to make the most of life. People like me. I’m going to try my best for Ellie.
Then I run all the way home because I want to get back before it gets dark.
Opening the front door I know immediately that something is wrong. The smell is not the usual mixture of dust and cigarettes. It’s stronger . . . smokier – Jesus, there’s something on fire.
I yank the kitchen door open – nothing – then the living room. The television is on, sound turned off. And there’s Mum, sprawled on the sofa, head down, not moving, with thick black smoke all around.